Letters to the Editor

Commentary helped put war into perspective

I would like to thank David Polhemus for his April 25 Focus commentary "telling it like it is" regarding the wrong direction the Bush administration is taking our country in. As he elegantly pointed out, not only are the lives of young Americans being sacrificed, there is also the debt that is being put on the shoulders of future generations. And to what purpose, what noble goal?

It is a pity that President Bush still has a majority support for his unnecessary war. I hope the commentary will help to convince more people to at least consider the possibility that perhaps one should look beyond the superficial words of the Bush administration. It will not be easy as Bush wraps himself in the American flag and speaks of divine guidance. It is most difficult to have a rational argument when there is no rationality.

Anti-Bush piece didn't belong in newspaper

So The Advertiser finally has dropped its "we are reasonable people" mask, with its day-after-day petty sniping at President Bush, and has unleashed editorial writer David Polhemus in a hysterical, overwrought commentary accusing Bush of being "overtly, pathologically dishonest," "vicious" and "demented" (Focus, April 25).

This emotional tirade is far beyond the bounds of reasonable editorial writing. What we have here is a prime case of left-wing extremism. And indeed, Polhemus admits in the piece that he may be crazy and that he is "a bleeding-heart liberal."

As a card-carrying "right-wing extremist," I welcome him to the extremist ranks. And while his shrill anti-Bush diatribe is exactly what one expects from a left-wing extremist, full of half-truths, Monday-morning quarterbacking and name-calling, it would be more appropriate on the new left-wing talk radio network than in a newspaper that supposedly values reasoned discourse.

Polhemus column was truly insightful

I cannot thank editorial writer David Polhemus enough for his April 25 column. At last someone looks at the national political landscape and sees what I see. He is so right, the emperor is stark naked.

President Bush has led this country into a 21st-century version of the Crusades, justifying his decision to do so with a long list of falsehoods. Hundreds of young Americans are dead and untold thousands of Iraqis have been put into the ground because of it. And, this doesn't begin to count the nation's riches that are being squandered because God wants Dubya to "free" folks, whether they want to be "freed" or not.

But the thing I find more terrifying is that better than 50 percent of America support him and this unnecessary disastrous war. Something is either terribly wrong with Polhemus and me, or with more than half of all Americans. And, the firsthand accounts of Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill and Bob Woodward, to name three, don't seem to have made a dent.

For the life of me, I can't see how our beloved country can stand four more years of the Bush administration. Thanks again for the wonderfully insightful column.

Rooster ban needed in residential areas

V. Hildebrandt's April 8 letter regarding banning roosters in residential areas was right on.

We have a nice home and beautiful yard and cannot ever have total peace and enjoyment due to an inconsiderate neighbor who has an entire rooster farm in his backyard. They start their noise at 3:30 a.m., interrupting sleep, and continue almost nonstop daily and on into the evening.

I want to ask T. Wilson (Letters, April 13), who wrote "Stop picking on the roosters," just how many roosters he or she has encountered and lived by in Waikiki?

Ko Olina is denying beach access to locals

Does the Ko Olina Resort own the beach fronting its property? Isn't there a law that allows the public access to the beach?

In the past two years, my family and I have been denied, on five separate occasions, access to the Ko Olina beaches under the guise of no beach parking. With all the land and the amount of money that was spent on this resort, Ko Olina could have provided more parking stalls for the beach. Instead, parking stalls are limited and fill up quickly. This seems to be a strategic plan to limit the amount of locals who can access "their" beach. If you can afford a $200-a-night hotel room, there is ample parking.

I hope others speak up against this practice by Ko Olina to take away our beach access. It is easy to see through a thinly veiled parking issue, when in reality it is about denying the public access to the beach.

Blame parents for lack of library experience

I had a different reaction to Saturday's front-page article about school kids and their benefactors than Richard Brill described in his April 27 letter to the editor. Mr. Brill says it's unthinkable that students in a sixth-grade class have never been in a library or bookstore.

Rather than blaming the state's public education system, I suggest that parents should be asked why they've not taken their children to a library or bookstore.

Public schools have children for about eight hours a day for about half the year. Parents should have the primary responsibility for teaching their children.

Homeless problem not growing dramatically

Nearly every year there are stories about how homelessness is on the increase and is becoming an ever-more-pressing problem. A recent report by the Heritage Foundation challenges these reports and reveals a somewhat different situation. It brings into question the veracity of these reports and leads to the conclusion that this is not a burgeoning problem, as so many assert.

Using the Conference of Mayors' report on the homeless, which claims substantial increases of both homelessness and emergency food use, the Heritage report reveals such claims of vast increases are not supported by census figures. Using census data between 1995 and 2001 that show there was no increase in the use of food pantries and soup kitchens in central cities or the nation as a whole, it casts doubt on the mayors' report claiming a 150 percent increase for the same period.

The mayors' data is also contradicted by detailed surveys conducted by Second Harvest, a major supplier to food banks. While the mayors' report claimed emergency food use increased by 100 percent between 1997 and 2001, Second Harvest reports it increased by only 9 percent for the same period.

Thus the mayors' report must be seen for what it is: a political document rather than a factual one. The idea that homelessness is drastically on the increase is used for the justification of an increase in taxes, an increase of social programs and an increase of government in general. This is the true thrust and purpose of the mayors' report.

Drug pooling program criticism is unjustified

I am surprised that Greg Marchildon, AARP Hawai'i state director ("Hawai'i ready to join Rx pool," April 23), criticized the governor and me about Hawai'i's joining the first and only multi-state pooling program to save millions in prescription drug costs for our Medicaid recipients.

By saying "In fact nothing's been done at all," Mr. Marchildon is not only incorrect, but he unfairly minimizes this administration's leadership and the hard work of my staff to ensure our participation in this innovative pooling program. It would have been better if Mr. Marchildon had consulted me about his concerns before providing misleading sound bites for the press.

The fact is that my Department of Human Services has spent several months, as it must, issuing a request for proposal to meet state and federal requirements that Medicaid contracts be competitively procured. We recently completed our selection to contract with First Health Services Corp., one of the nation's leading pharmacy benefit administrators of state Medicaid programs, to pool or combine Hawai'i's Medicaid purchasing power with other states' purchasing power during rebate negotiations.

The five other states in the pooling program have also contracted with First Health Services Corp. Together, First Health Services will work with us to get Hawai'i's Medicaid state plan amendment federally approved expeditiously. First Health Services has assured me, personally, that it will wait for us before the pooling program will begin to renegotiate with the pharmaceutical manufacturers to obtain better discounts.

Our goal is to equal or exceed the purchasing power of the largest states in the nation. This new and unique multi-state partnership will give us the opportunity to achieve better drug-cost savings to help maintain access to affordable medications for our Medicaid recipients.

I am grateful that Mr. Marchildon has at least acknowledged that this pooling program "could be a huge step forward in being able to negotiate really meaningful discounts and rebates." This is precisely the point of our efforts. We welcome AARP Hawai'i's support of our administration's initiative.

School reform on back burner

Advertiser Capitol Bureau writers Gordon Y.K. Pang's and Lynda Arakawa's April 14 article "School boards issue is 'past' " brought to mind a famous headline of the mid-1970s: "Jerry Ford to New York: DROP DEAD!"

The audacious message of utter contempt Hawai'i state legislators have sent to parents of public-school children and other taxpayers — expected to continue to float a bloated, uncaring, dysfunctional state Department of Education year after year without question — is something that beggars description. But let's try to capture the spirit of it anyway, shall we? OK, here goes.

Lawmakers to citizens: "Shut you face, eh! Get over it, already! We want anyting from you pests aftah you re-elect us in Novembah, we upside you down and shake out moah, da kine, taxes! Until den, take a hike, suck it up — quit grumbling!"

As if to punctuate the legislators' message of brazen contempt for voters, The Advertiser included in the same edition a poignant letter from a Wai'anae High School senior ("Wai'anae High: nowhere to run") that illustrates yet again the neglect that permeates DOE (gag me with a spoon) "stewardship" of schools and students now trapped in the belly of this lumbering, haphazard, gargantuan, wild pig of a bureaucracy. At $2 billion a year and rising, the hog image has been more than earned.

But wait! There is yet more salt to rub into the wound. The DOE superintendent — obviously giddy with relief that the bullet of accountability has again been dodged, at least for this legislative session — adds revealing commentary. The Advertiser reports the Supe as one who "hopes to start a pilot program at about a dozen schools ... to ease the transition to a new student spending formula and new school councils ... (and) hoped to have the school councils in place at all schools by the 2005-06 school year." Operative words? "Hopes," "ease" and "hoped."

The Advertiser reports legislation also includes $400,000 for this pilot program. In short, same old, same old — no prospect of any near-term academic improvement for the kids, but plenty of prospect for increased spending in the near term to be borne by the adults.

In the last election, one of our beloved old pols fearlessly bellowed, "Democrats have a RIGHT to govern in this state!"

Well? Do they? If the meek are to inherit the earth, maybe a good place to start would be Hawai'i. Certainly the parents and other taxpaying voters of this state have been meek enough in swallowing all the "let them eat cake" guff of those who fancy they have a RIGHT to incumbency year after year.

A good time to begin laying claim to that inheritance? November hastens toward us on winged feet.